Tian was lying on her back on Wan Shin’s sofa—or the sofa of Wan Shin’s parents, more rightfully, although the Chans were presently not in the house. She was mottled with bruises on every key point on her body, and sweating so hard she shone. When Adeline and Christina had first laid eyes on her, it seemed she’d been in a terrible fight. The truth they all but strangled out of her was worse: for reasons she had yet to divulge, Tian had gone to a maverick blood worker Needle and asked him to block her passage to the goddess.Maverickwas the nice word: An Chee had, until recently, been in prison for running a blood brokerage operation at Outram Hospital, charging hundreds of dollars for blood he’d taken from his own patients. He was also something of an outcast from the Needles for his far-fetched ideas.
Ideas, apparently, that weren’t so far-fetched after all.
It had never been done. It was sacrilegious and unthinkable and had absolutely never been done, but he and Tian had tried several times, with the Needle’s own theories of blood and circulations, and several hours ago, it had worked. Adeline’s fire had clamped off in the middle of a ward in Alexandra Hospital, and Tian had felt a stop in her chest like her heart going to stone. She’d had to pay An Chee through her teeth, but it was worth the impossible: he’d blocked her from Lady Butterfly.
Of course, about forty minutes ago, her capillaries had started to burst, which was when Wan Shin finally called the other girls.
Scarlet bruises had opened on Tian’s wrists, her throat, her knees, in lines down her abdomen, the dip of her hips, her temples, her palms, and the insides of her elbows. Even the whites of her eyes were streaked with red, when she managed to open them,and she was burning to the touch. She’d stripped down to her bra and cotton shorts. Wan Shin had fetched her ice. But the bag was turning to water and evidently hadn’t alleviated a thing. Adeline’s hands had started getting twitchy, but it was hard to tell whether it was because of her missing fire or because she wanted to put them around Tian’s throat.
“You shouldn’t call him a maniac,” Tian muttered. “He was right.”
“You look like you got the shit kicked out of you,” Adeline said. She only felt rage now, and it was cold.
“Been there… hurt less.”
It was the fourth time today Adeline was being confronted with a girl wracked by fever—but she’d known without trying that she wouldn’t be able to replicate what she’d done for the Marias. That ability was gone with the fire. “It’s Lady Butterfly fighting you. She’s not happy.”
“Oh no,” Tian agreed, through heavy breaths. “She’s boiling me.”
“You can feel her?”
“Sometimes. Like flickering. Like—” Tian arched as another bruise bloomed on her upper thigh. She coughed—blood, onto the floor—and curled up with a whimper. “Not—my best idea.”
Wan Shin walked over with a towel and started scrubbing off the boards. “Can’t you call the Needle again to unblock it?” she demanded.
Tian shook her head. “Didn’t figure… that part out yet.”
Christina didn’t even dignify this with more swearing. Adeline, meanwhile, was returning again to Lady Butterfly. The goddess was personal and petty. Lady Butterfly didn’t like being restrained. She’d defied all known understandings of the kongsi to tether herself to Adeline. Possibly, Fan Ge was right and she was an abomination, at least to the kongsi’s proper order. But Adeline understood some of her.
Crucially, Adeline had once hosted her. Even without fire, shehad some inkling of what the goddess had liked about Tian in the first place, and she had some idea, thanks to Pek Mun, on how to reach her.
“Okay,” she said, getting up. “Everyone’s listening to me now.”
“Adeline?” Christina said warily. “What are you doing?”
“What the Lady is telling me to.” Adeline didn’t know if she was lying. But it felt right, and all she had were her instincts, now. “Someone light incense, if there is any.” She heard Wan Shin move behind her, ground her teeth a little, then refocused. She grabbed Tian’s arms—slick, almost slippery, but she dragged Tian off the sofa even through Tian’s obvious protests of pain. “Get on your knees.” It was both immediately simple and impossibly difficult to arrange her; Tian was nearly delirious as to be completely malleable, but also with almost no ability to hold herself up. She had to brace herself with the heels of her palms, and even then she looked like she might collapse at any moment. “Get it together.”
Tian grimaced. She stared up at Adeline through wavering bloodshot eyes and Adeline pretended she didn’t think of her like this—shining down to the skin—in other contexts. Incense began to swirl around them. Adeline took the lighter and then the pocketknife she’d started carrying around, and began to heat the blade.
“Adeline,” Christina said in alarm. But Tian looked at Adeline and didn’t say no.
Adeline let the knife cool and willed herself not to shake holding it, sifting through in her mind what she was about to attempt. The bruises were all forming on key meridians. She couldn’t have named them, but she recognized their shape mapped across the body. Mavis had shown them diagrams. “Start praying,” she said.
And sliced the first bruise open.
Tian’s head jerked. Adeline had gone as shallow as possible, just aiming to break the skin, but it was hard to measure. Red welled to the surface of Tian’s arm, and the bruise dissolved itself. Adeline’s heart hammered, both in knowing she was right and wonderingexactly how far she was supposed to take it—she couldn’t help but think it was a test, for all of them, and if they just proved themselves, then the goddess wouldn’t let Three Steel win.
Tian muttered something unintelligible, possibly taking Adeline’s advice to pray. When no new cut came, her glassy eyes swung back to Adeline. “Don’t be a pussy,” she breathed.
Adeline clenched her jaw, picked another at random, and cut her farther down the same arm. Tian just curled her fists and shut her eyes. “Don’t tense,” Christina said, low and resigned. “It’ll hurt more.” It didn’t help; Tian was tense with the effort just to stay upright.
“Adeline.” Tian swallowed. “Do it fast and don’t look at me.” When Adeline hesitated still, she cracked half a smile. “Weren’t you mad at me?”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.” But Adeline grabbed onto her own anger nonetheless, and without looking at Tian as advised, opened the other four on the arm in quick succession. There wereso manyover Tian’s body, more than it had seemed at first, like something really was straining to break free from inside her. Tian’s arm trickled with red. She was taking it admirably and in silence, quips aside; Adeline felt like screaming. Hubris about the goddess had killed her mother. Why didn’t Tian know better?
Yet, while she’d easily found contempt for her mother, with Tian she wanted to intervene.
One more, she thought, demanding Lady Butterfly hear her.You get one more.
